State-of-the-Art Contractor: QuickBooks Job Costing

Recently I wrote about Quicken and
QuickBooks and the tremendous following
these personal finance and
accounting programs have among contractors
and subs. The popularity of
this software is no mystery: Both programs
are easy to understand, painless
to set up, fun to use, and inexpensive.
Instead of looking at the familiar
territory covered by most off-the-shelf
accounting programs — accounts
receivable, accounts payable, balance
sheets, and income statements — I
want to focus on QuickBooks's ability
to track labor, materials, and subcontractor
costs on a per-job basis. This is
commonly known as "job costing"
and is probably the most important
report a contractor needs in his dayto-
day business operations. As an oldtimer
once put it, "If your outflow is
greater